Church | The Benjamin DeMann Blog

October 9, 2024

A Sinner's Practical Guide to Christ's Atonement

The following is a talk that I prepared for sacrament meeting on February 25, 2024. I struggled a bit with this topic because there’s so much to say about the atonement. It's not only the most important aspect of our faith but of everything. At the same time, it’s one of the most incomprehensible concepts, considering that Christ accomplished an impossibly vast amount of atoning in such a short period of time. And if we set aside for a moment the infinite scope of the Atonement—applying to all…

July 2, 2023

Book of Mormon Translation Part I

Part of my Response to The LDS Gospel Topics Essays: A Scholarly Engagement Intro We’re not going to be reviewing these essays in any significant order. It’s just in the order of what I am most interested in researching right now. The Book of Mormon translation is the topic that got me into this whole thing so we’re starting here. The pattern that we will be following is I will give my recollection of events to the best of my knowledge and try to give my perspective on how I felt as these…

August 30, 2023

Book of Mormon Translation Part II

This is part 2 of my perspective of the topic of the Book of Mormon translation: part of my Response to The LDS Gospel Topics Essays: A Scholarly Engagement Objective My purpose in reviewing the Gospel Topics Essays: I want to look over them to see what (if anything) is different from what I was taught growing up in the church. If anything is different I want to explore why it might be different. Finally I want to address if these differences might constitute church leaders hiding the truth…

October 31, 2023

Book of Mormon Translation Part III

Introduction to Book of Mormon Translation Theory A Preface to Part Three of My Book or Mormon Translation Gospel Topics Essay Review The last two posts about the translation of the Book of Mormon were building up to this moment where I review John-Charles Duffy's1 review of the Church's Gospel Topics Essay about the translation of the Book of Mormon. I was surprised that his essay focused mostly on the translation process and less on the translation tools. I feel like most of the controversy is…

March 3, 2024

Book of Mormon and DNA Studies Part I

Off the bat, I feel like this one doesn't really fit into the same theme of answering the question, "Is the church hiding stuff?" So I'm going to approach this topic a little differently. For part one, I'll try to go through what I already know about this topic, my feelings, and my opinions on it before doing further research. In part two, I'll go over the Gospel Topics Essay and point out anything new I learned from it. I've already looked at the essay a little bit, and I already know there is…

July 9, 2023

My Objectives: An Interlude

Some additional information has come to light (for me) about the Book of Mormon translation that I need to dig into more before I publish part two of my Book of Mormon translation analysis (long story short I might be wrong about everything). In the meantime, here is something that I have been working on to try and better express what I am trying to accomplish with my blog, and address some of my limitations and biases. I thought I would share it with you. What is the purpose of this blog? There…

February 4, 2024

My Testimony

As you read through all of my blog, I hope it becomes apparent where I stand on everything. However, just in case, I want to make it crystal clear where I stand and what I believe. I believe that the Book of Mormon is the word of God. By "word of God," I mean that I believe it teaches true and correct principles. By following its teachings, we draw closer to God, just as we would by following the words of God given to us through any prophet, whether ancient or modern. I believe the Book of…

June 9, 2023

Response to The LDS Gospel Topics Essays: A Scholarly Engagement

I started reading this book, a collection of essays, edited by Matthew L Harris and Newell G Bringhurst. In it, various author, each a scholar focused on Mormon history and/or religious thought, analyze and respond to the Gospel Topics Essays that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (hereafter referred to as “the church”) published about 10 years ago. As a faithful member of the church, I had a lot of feelings about this book. The essays ranged from inane to intriguing. While I am…

June 4, 2023

Sin of Apologetics

There is a mistake that I feel like a lot of apologists make and I almost made it. A critic will say, “Joseph Smith couldn’t have done this because of this,” or “the church can’t be true because of this”, and then the apologist responds with “well actually the church is true because of this physical evidence or because of thing that happened that contradicts your claim”. For example, a critic might say, Joseph Smith just made up the Book of Mormon, he’s a savant and was just able to dictate it…

September 10, 2023

Spiritual Nutrition

The following is a talk I gave in sacrament meeting today. Today I will be speaking about spiritual nourishment, and I'll be drawing on President Faust's talk from October 20061 for inspiration. In his talk he shared a number of stories of people that found important spiritual nutrients as they followed the teachings of the Savior. Some of the nutrients he focused on were faith, repentance, building a testimony of Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, and selfless service. Today instead of focusing…

March 2, 2024

True Origins of the Book of Mormon Revealed

Joseph Smith occasionally would meet with an old man that lived near Joseph’s home1. In his late teenage years Joseph met several times2 with this old man who would tell Joseph stories from when he was younger. On at least one of these occasions, he told Joseph about a manuscript that he and his father had been writing3. In perhaps a moment of vulnerability the old man confided in Joseph that there had been some delays in finishing the text when his father had died4 and between that and some…

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